Extrajudicial killings in the Gaza Strip

Gaza Strip
Hamas government
North Gaza Gaza GAZA CITY Deir al-Balah Khan Yunis Rafah
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There have been numerous targeted killings, summary executions, and other extrajudicial killings in the Gaza Strip and surrounding areas. A small number of people in the Gaza Strip have been sentenced to death after murder convictions in civilian courts, but far more executions have been implemented by military courts with limited accountability, and many have been comletely extrajudicial killings or summary executions. Most of these killings have been during broader violent conflicts, but the people killed were unarmed and not actively engaged in combat at the time.

There are multiple deaths for which, the reason for the killing, the circumstances of the death, and whether it constitutes an extrajudicial execution are controversial and disputed, for example Mahmoud Ishtiwi^[a] and Fayeq Mabhouh.^[b]

Gaza Strip 1949 to 1967

Khan Yunis 1956

Conflicting reports of skirmishes between the two peoples were also reported in the neighboring Khan Yunis Camp, which housed displaced Palestinian refugees^{[citation needed]}. PLO official Abdullah Al Hourani was in the camp at the time of the killings.^[1] Al Hourani alleged that men were taken from their homes and shot by the Israeli Defense Forces. Hourani himself claimed to have fled from an attempted summary execution without injury.^[2]

Gaza Strip 2007 to 2023

Zeitoun killings 2008 - 2009

The Zeitoun killings refer to the Israeli military incursion, led by the Givati Brigade unit of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF),^[3] into the Zeitoun district of Gaza City as part of the three-week 2008–09 Gaza War. In the Arab world, it is referred to as the Zeitoun District Massacre (Arabic: مجزرة حي الزيتون).^[4] A total of 48 residents of Zeitoun were killed, most of them women, children, and the elderly;^[5] 27 homes, a mosque and a number of farms were destroyed by Israeli forces.^[3]

23 executed by Al Qassam in 2014

During the 2014 Gaza War,^[6][7] Hamas executed 23 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.^[8] According to an Amnesty International report, 23 Palestinians were executed by Al-Qassam in the course of the 2014 conflict, and 16 of them imprisoned from before the war began.^[9][10] Some were on trial for espionage, but those trials were suddenly city short. From among the executed, 6 were killed by a firing squad outside a mosque in front of hundreds of spectators including children. Amnesty claimed that Hamas used the cover of the war, which had a very heavily death toll,^[6] to carry out summary executions, to settle scores against opponents under the pretext they were collaborators with Israel.^[11][8] They were also accused of torture.^[7]

War 2023

Massacre of unarmed military

One of the least discussed war crimes in the 7 October attacks was the massacre of unarmed members of the Israeli military at military bases in the Gaza Envelope. The maker of the Al Jazeera documentary "7 October" refectory that fabricated war crimes that did not happen on 7 October received more attention than their real war crimes.

Alleged Field executions by Israeli ground forces

OHCHR stated on 20 December 2023 that according to witness accounts circulated by media sources and Euro-Med Monitor, Israeli soldiers summarily killed eleven unarmed men in Rimal.^[12] Subsequently in January 2024, Al Jazeera reported that the number of deaths was 19. Euro-Med Monitor told Al Jazeera they believe there is a pattern of "systematic" killing, that "In at least 13 of field executions, we corroborated that it was arbitrary on the part of the Israeli forces." On 26 December 2023, Euro-Med Monitor submitted a file to the International Criminal Court and United Nations special rapporteurs documenting dozens of cases of field executions carried out by Israeli forces and calling for an investigation.^[13][14][15]

Shadia Abu Ghazala School massacre

The Euro-Med Monitor stated the victims of the Shadia Abu Ghazala School massacre were subjected to "field executions" while being questioned.^[16] Unarmed people were shot at point blank ^[17]

Reports of parents being shot in front of children

Some war orphans in Gaza told matching stories about their parents being shot by soldiers who invaded the family home. Bisan Owda interviewed a 5 year old child named Faisal Ahmed Al-Khalidi who said that both his father and his mother (who was 7 months pregnant at the time) had both been shot in front of him by soldiers who raided their home.^[18] Other orphans told similar stories about their parents being killed.^[19]

Spillover into Sinai Peninsula

Egyptian Army

Two major massacres took place in the Sinai Peninsula. Ras Sedr massacre: A mass murder of at least 52 Egyptian prisoners of war that took place immediately after a paratrooper unit of the Israel Defense Forces conquered Ras Sedr.^[20] El Arish massacre: Earlier in the day, according to the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights, the Israeli Defense Forces had massacred hundreds of Egyptian prisoners of war or wounded soldiers in El Arish. Survivors alleged later that about 400 wounded Egyptians were buried alive outside the captured El Arish International Airport, and that 150 prisoners in the mountains of the Sinai were run over by Israeli tanks.^[21]

Hamas

See also

• anti-LGBT violence in Palestine
• Capital punishment in the Gaza Strip
• Executions and assassinations in the West Bank and Jerusalem
• Extrajudicial killing
• Gaza Strip mass graves
• Extrajudicial killings by Hamas
• Summary execution
• Targeted killings by Israel: List of Israeli assassinations

Notes

References